Cable is discovering the joys of Wi-Fi; why not mobile?

For the last few years, an alternate wireless network has been emerging in the U.S.: one not built by the mobile operators but by cable providers. Cablevision(s cvc), Time Warner Cable(s twc), and Comcast(s cmsca) have all launched numerous Wi-Fi hotspots in their service areas, and last week, Bright House joined the club, turning on 2,000 outdoor and indoor hotspots across the state of Florida. The Multiple Service Operators (MSOs) have latched onto the idea of Wi-Fi as a way of extending their home and business broadband services to customers on the go, and it’s paying dividends. Why haven’t their mobile counterparts followed suit?

The obvious answer as to why mobile carriers haven’t been as quick to pull the trigger the trigger on Wi-Fi is that they don’t need it from a geographic standpoint. Their networks already cover every conceivable area they could hope to reach with Wi-Fi, so the business case for carriers isn’t coverage; it’s capacity. As more customers consume more network resources, they place tremendous loads on the network’s high-traffic zones.

One of the reasons that cellular operators have not built out more Wi-Fi is that they are still wrestling with ways to make the user experience seamless for both voice and data. The handset ( or terminal in MNO-speak ) needs to be seamlessly manageable by the network operator. The back end of a Wi-Fi network has yet to be fully integrated into a MNO’s cell core net.

I suspect that this will happen when VoLTE becomes widespread that Wi-Fi nets will then be embraced by MNOs.